By Maritez Apigo – Open Educational Resources (OER) Coordinator, Distance Education Coordinator, and English Professor at Contra Costa College
A highlight of my work this spring as the Open for Antiracism (OFAR) Lead Advisory Coach is encouraging the seven other Advisory Coaches who are providing direct peer support to faculty at their assigned California community college. Advisory Coaches are helping these faculty make significant curricular, pedagogical, and institutional transformations with Open Educational Resources (OER) and open pedagogy aligned with antiracism and liberation for all students.
Advisory Coaches 2022-23
English Faculty
While coaching the Compton College team in implementing their Antiracist Action Plans, I have the pleasure of supporting them in decolonizing their syllabi and creating humanized liquid syllabi. The entire team is making their syllabus language more welcoming, revising policies to be more flexible, and providing students with a sense of belonging and inclusion. Compton College team member Gayathri Manikandan, a Math Instructor, is reconstructing her statistics course to use OER and to include open pedagogy and antiracist assignments throughout. David Chavez, an Ethnic Studies Instructor, is integrating OER materials and revising his first unit to get students engaged in the collective learning space. Some of the team members are also seeking strategies to make their grading more equitable.
College teams regularly attend OFAR professional development webinars on topics such as “Dismantling Racism in the California Community College System” during which Dr. Edward Bush, President of Los Cosumnes River College, begins by asking the question “Is the California Community College System working for our students?” Another webinar by Suzanne Wakim, Butte College, and Amanda Taintor, Reedley College, spotlights “Practical Steps for Implementing Antiracist Teaching with Open Pedagogy” focusing on renewable, holistic, and alternative assessments. Last year’s OFAR participants shared their action plans in a webinar with details from their classroom implementations entitled “Four Projects from OFAR 2021-22”.
Four Projects from OFAR 2021-22:
In the role of Advisory Coach, we help support the work of our college team by meeting monthly to provide feedback, answer questions, and encourage them to dig deeper. Each coach is a veteran community college faculty member and brings particular expertise in OER, antiracism, or course design. Coaches share resources and brainstorm solutions with one another. We understand that each faculty member begins at different levels, and we challenge them to implement OER and take their antiracist and open pedagogy to the next level.
OFAR is such transformative and rewarding work that five of the eight Advisory Coaches are former participants of the program themselves. Ana Garcia-Garcia, alumnus and now coach of Hartnell College, explains, “I’m here to help others find their OFAR way. I use my experience in the program to help them become their best antiracist and inclusive selves in their courses and with their specific student populations.” Hossna Sadat Ahadi, alumnus and now coach of Clovis Community College, comments, “Whenever I meet with faculty members, they share their students’ testimonials and how impactful the antiracist praxis was for them.”
I am also here to let them know this is a life journey and that what they are learning, they’ll expand and make better for years to come. Hopefully, they’ll be the ones inspiring others soon.
Ana Garcia-Garcia, OFAR alumnus and coach of Hartnell College team
Not only do we coaches witness curricular and pedagogical transformation in a single year of OFAR, but we also inspire faculty to continue their antiracist and OER journeys even beyond the scope of the program. Dr. Alisa Cooper, coach of Moorpark College, expresses, “My role as a coach is…letting them know that even just a little change is better than none, so they don’t have to do it all in this first go. It’s something that they can build, each semester adding new elements to get to that overarching goal.” Ana Garcia-Garcia discloses, “I am also here to let them know this is a life journey and that what they are learning, they’ll expand and make better for years to come. Hopefully, they’ll be the ones inspiring others soon.”
Our end-of-the-year Showcase coming in June is when we will celebrate each college team as they highlight their OFAR implementations of OER, open pedagogy, and antiracist pedagogy. I’m looking forward to the classroom and institutional changes and their impact on student success that a fourth year of OFAR will bring in 2023-24.
For more on OFAR this year, visit the article “OFAR Year Three Kicks Off”.
Open for Antiracism acknowledges the generous support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in helping to make this program possible.
About Maritez
For over two decades, Maritez Apigo has had the honor of teaching English and ESL in community colleges, high schools, and middle schools in the Bay Area, California, and in Hawaii. She has been teaching online since earning her M.A. in English and TESOL from SFSU in 2012, and she holds an Online Network of Educators (@ONE) Certificate in Online Teaching and Design and an @ONE Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles. Currently, she is the Distance Education Coordinator, the Open Educational Resources (OER) Coordinator, and an online and hybrid English Professor at Contra Costa College. As a leader in online education, she trains faculty in online pedagogy at the college, district, and state levels. She is an @ONE Online Course Facilitator of four professional development courses. On the leadership team of Open for AntiRacism (OFAR), she serves as a Course Facilitator and Lead Advisory Coach. Her passions for social justice, equity, innovation, and student success are illuminated in her work. When she’s not teaching, you might discover her behind the turntables DJing, in the dance studio working on her dance technique, or at a soccer field cheering on her two young children.
Twitter: @maritezapigo
Featured Image: Coffee Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash